Sandra Hurst's Blog

This part of Ren and Laban’s story never made it into the final text of “Guardian” but now, on re-reading it in preparation for book 3, my heart, and the water leaking from my eyes, tells me that it deserves to be told.

Endings.

An odd, sombre moonlight illuminated the forest, touching the tops of the trees with silver, but never quite reaching the mossy floor. Siann knelt in the doorway of the Grey Lodge carefully wrapping a small half-formed body, sprinkling fragrant herbs between the layers of green cloth. Without thinking she found herself crooning under her voice, singing the old cradle-songs Matra had sung for her as a baby. She tenderly picked up a strip of birchbark and tied it into the cradle she was weaving. Each strip that she used had been carved by the child’s parents with a word or phrase of blessing, they had been gifts for the child’s birth, meant to speak purpose and destiny into the little one’s life. Now they were reminders of all the things that would have to wait until the next turn of the Stars. Finally finished, Siann picked up the wicker cradle with its tiny occupant and stepped into the silent camp. It was late, the camp was asleep. There would be no public ceremony for this little one, no friends reminiscing or telling stories to lead her back to the Road, only a quiet goodbye, and the realization that all those memories would never happen.

Siann walked away from the camp with her sad burden, finding Ren and Laban waiting for her at the lightning stones. Gently placing the baby on the makeshift altar in the middle of the clearing, Siann stepped aside to allow Ren and Laban to say goodbye. Ren looked almost eerie in the moonlight, her normally sharp features pinched and fragile, her hand reaching convulsively for the small hand she would never hold. Laban looked broken, eyes empty, strong hands idle at his side. Siann looked at him and knew that he could not do this, it was not in him to send his daughter onto the road.

“Shaman” she said in a whisper. “This is not a task you need to do, Please, let me carry at least this part of the burden.”

Laban’s eyes were haunted as he handed her the Staff of Lightning, the symbol of the Shaman’s power. “Please,” he choked, “Tell her to wait for us on the Road. We will find her.” Wrapping an arm around Ren’s waist, leaning as much as supporting, he led her away from the clearing and back towards the camp.

Blinking away tears Siann raised the Staff over her head and began the ritual to start the little one on the Road to the Elder Stars. “I stand for the people,” she said, “for all those who Walk in the darkness of this world, dreaming of the Elder Stars.” Scrubbing her tunic sleeve across her eyes she continued, voice thick and husky with emotion. “This little one came from you, she returns to you. Welcome her and protect her for us, until she can rejoin the People on the Sky Road.” We name her Yali, pure in heart, and loved by her People. She will not be forgotten.”

The great crystal in the staff flared a brilliant green and suddenly the small byre was empty. Nothing to bury, nothing to mourn, just a beginning that never began.

via #Friday Fiction 100-Word Challenge / “The Girl Who Takes Pictures of Locks”

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I am currently OPEN to review requests on everything but:

HorrorCrime FictionMid-grade and children’s books

not because I don’t see the value in these genres. I just don’t enjoy them, so I can’t give a fair opinion.

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Sunrise in the Fog.

In my life I have believed in many things. I have been everything from an amateur wiccan, to a name-it-and-claim-it Christian, to a working missionary and back again. My mother believed that the moon was a reflection of the sun, because in the 1920’s that is what the school taught. My nephew believed that eating broccoli would turn him into a ninja turtle, because his aunt (/blush) convinced him it was true. Belief has to be more than intellectual acceptance.

Can Christianity and tribalism or mysticism or whatever ‘ism you want to call it co-exist? I think I need to know.

I am not spending a great deal of time editing these notes, just throwing them out for selected people to comment and reply to. I don’t want to start controversy rather to discuss intelligently with people I respect the disconnect between my mind and a heart that seems to be increasingly given to mysticism. Many years ago during a prayer meeting I was told that I was an easter egg, all chocolate on the outside but hollow in the middle. Maybe I finally need to break the egg to find out.

This note is hopefully to help boost an ongoing internal conversation into belief, faith and other things of serious or not serious portent. In the last months I have been challenged several times on ‘what I believe’ and I’m not sure I can answer. What does it mean to believe something? the dictionary says “to believe as true”- to intellectually accept and agree with. If I was asked, according to that definition -what I believe I would probably quote John 3:16 and as much of the Apostle’s creed as I can remember, but I don’t know what that means when I also believe in the spirit of the Crow who follows and protects our family when traveling and the need in my heart to stare into campfires and try to hear some whisper of the Fae drums of a long gone time.

Comments are very welcome… Discuss!

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First, a confession, it’s taken me 3 months-okay 5 months, maybe 6 months-to write this blog post. I’ve been fighting it ever since the concept of Hana-Yori-Dango (Dumplings over flowers) ran out of Alanea Alder’s book, jumped over my writer’s block and crashed into my frantic attempts to ignore the plot holes in my latest work-in-progress.

This Japanese concept urges us to choose things that are practical (Dumplings – Dango) over things that are a fleeting pleasure (Flowers-Hana).

Bringing this into the worlds of my book is proving to be hard, bringing it into my life is harder.

I’ve been thinking of Siann’s issue with this. She thinks Y’keta is an idiot. She calls him a ‘shellhead’ and believes that he doesn’t know anything that could be useful. Or does she? Is she just looking past a dumpling just in case a flower shows up?

Am I looking past the obvious story that books one and two in the Sky Road have set up just hoping that something shiny will pop up and make writing easy again?  

How many times have I chased a flower, something ephemeral, that I knew I couldn’t keep, and gone right past the things that I knew I needed? It’s an unfortunate fact that I often don’t want things that feed me. I choose things that are the emotional equivalent of cotton candy and then wonder why I come away with a sugar headache and an empty heart. You’d think all the ‘bad boys’ in my misspent youth would have taught me this.

What will it take, Sandra, to feed your soul, your story, instead of the never ending need to dodge, game, read, and play, my way out of progress and into the never ending chase for one more flower.

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Photo by Dana Tentis on Pexels.com

You arrived at the party two hours late, greeted your hostess and tried to minimize the stink-eye by passing over a ten dollar bottle of plonk that you picked up at losers-r-us just before it closed. Wandering nonchalantly over to the buffet table you curse your impulsive decision to skip dinner. All that’s left are three pieces of cheese with strange blue mould running through them, a few limp Ritz crackers, and enough broccoli to regulate the colon of King Kong.

Expectations shattered, enjoyment gone, you spend the rest of the night with a small group of fellow sufferers discussing something that you choose to forget before the conversation even ends. Giving up, you head home, grab a PBJ and swear that you’ll say no next time.

Odd words for a blog about writing? Maybe. But this is what it feels like in my writing life right now. The excitement is gone, the words are dried up and mouldy, and the company in my head sounds more like a political convention than a fantasy novel.

The first thing I ever learned about writing was ‘you have to write daily to be an author.’ I can’t do that. I can’t. The words are gone, and I don’t know how to get them back.

My first book, Exile, was born in a rush of passion. Words and images appeared faster than my fingers could type to get them on the page.  Guardian was definitely still a passion story though it was built more slowly. There was a question that I was consumed with and the story came from that exploration. Lifebinder isn’t working. I’ve got the start of a dozen scenes and a million ideas, but nothing is coherent and I’m sulking.

Is it worth fighting through the wall and finding the words again?  Have all the changes that my life has been through in the last two years altered my voice forever? Or is the Skyroad still in there somewhere, just waiting for a quiet night for the drums to beat again.

I don’t know.

Sometimes the things your story demands can break your heart.  I cried so much writing this section, but Siann is a healer, she had to try to heal Ihkopi. She had to try…

###

Siann entered the healer’s hut, hands shaking with fear. The snakes in her heart had been whispering that this moment would come ever since D’vhan had brought Ihkopi back to the village. The healers had done everything they could to treat the boy, but nothing was working. He had travelled too far on the Road. Laban had offered his life to call the boy back, so had D’vhan and almost every warrior in Red Lodge. How did she pick someone? Who was she to say whose life was to be risked? This could kill them.

Squatting down beside D’vhan she laid a gentle hand on Ihkopi’s brow. He was burning with fever, the skin dry and brittle to her touch. “How can I make this decision?” She whispered softly to D’vhan. “I have no idea how much it will take to pull Ihkopi back and once I begin, I may not be able to stop!”

“It is our oath, Siann,” D’vhan said. His voice was solemn, deep and still as a mountain lake. “There is not one of us that will not risk the Road for this hatchling. It is our oath.”  He shuffled a bit closer as Miah, one of the younger green leaders stopped at Ihkopi’s bedside. Her quiet voice and gentle manner soothing the young boy for a few moments.

“You cannot decide,” he said. “It is not fair of us to ask you.” D’vhan closed his eyes, took one deep breath to steady himself against the decision and said, “I will do this.”

“Nimiteh, No!” Dahi strode across the healer’s hut from where he had just entered. “I forbid it. You will not risk yourself this way.”

The fire that flashed in D’vhan’s eyes would have frightened a lesser man. “You do not allow, Dahi of Esquialt?” D’vhan asked quietly, pressing one weathered hand into Dahi’s chest, pushing him away. “I will not”—each word was accompanied by a strong shove that edged Dahi back towards the entrance of the lodge—”see a child of this village die because my life is too precious to risk. What would your grandmother say to you? What would she think?”

Dahi’s red face turned pale and ignoring his stubborn mate he turned to face Siann with a bow. “I apologize, shaman,” he said. “My heart outraces my mind at times and my tongue becomes unruly.”

D’vhan humphed. “Unruly?” he muttered.

“My mate is correct.” Dahi glanced at D’vhan quickly hoping that speaking of their mating publicly would soften his temper. “I offer myself, my blood, for healing Ihkopi. I am younger, stronger, and less essential to the village.” D’vhan’s eyes had turned into black spears.

“Dahi—”

“No,” Siann interrupted them both her voice slipping into that cold, alien tone that meant her power was speaking. “You are all so busy being honourable and self-sacrificing. There is no more time. Ihkopi is a child and his life is slipping away while you decide which of you will be the hero to save him.” One too-thin arm swept both warriors aside, forcing them to look back towards Ihkopi’s bed where Miah knelt patiently sponging the young boys brow, talking gently. “That life is being given for his—now—while you argue about oaths.

“Miah, Green child of Esquialt” Miah jumped, her whole focus had been on the young boy that their Green Mother had driven away.

“Siann?” she asked, shrinking back a little when she saw the white and red flashes in the normally placid eyes.

“Will you give your life to the Lifebinder to draw Ihkopi back from the Road?” Siann said. “Knowing it may take much or even all of your life?”

Miah swallowed thickly, her pale skin suddenly covered in nervous sweat. “I saw what the Lifebinder did to heal Peyt. Is that what you mean?”

Siann nodded, waiting.

Closing her eyes, taking one deep breath, Hahnee’s daughter said. “I am willing Shaman.”

“Then come child,” the not-Siann voice said almost gently. Taking her dagger and drawing a thin line of blood from Miah’s hand she pressed the Lifebinder Crystal into the pool of life that dripped down onto Ihkopi’s unresponsive form. “Blood for the life of the People,”

Miah straightened up sharply as though lightning had streaked through her, blinked several times, and then crumpled to the floor. While Siann stood unmoving, her whole body surrounded by an eerie red light flickering from where the bloody crystal sat in her hand.

Spring. The cracked voice of the matriarch whispered.

We have found her. It will be ours in the spring.

###

Siann opened her eyes to an ocean of colour. Lights of blue, green, and purple seemed to flicker about her. Shapes without form or substance followed the lights like fireflies drawn one way and another. Above her head, or where she assumed was her head a path of stars stretched from horizon to horizon. I’m on the Road, she thought. The crystal drew too much and I have passed onto the Road. Ahead of her a small figure seemed to be standing within the dancing lights, waiting for her.

“Maskim?” she said in a voice that sounded much younger than her twenty-one years. Focussing on the figure seemed to pull her close enough to see that it wasn’t her mother, but Ihkopi who stood ahead of her watching the flickering lights that danced between the earth and the Road.

Swallowing a sob of disappointment, Siann tried to reach out to the young boy. “Come back, Ihkopi, all is well. The People do not wish to lose your light.

The smile that Ihkopi gave her was peaceful. “Can you see the Dancers?” he said in his light, soft tone. “Look how they move between the earth and the Elder Stars, Siann, it’s so beautiful.”

“Come home,” she tried again. “Napaay misses you. Go into Red Lodge as you had planned. You have much to give our world, Ihkopi, do not Walk away.”

“My Walk is done, Siann, I am happy so.” Ihkopi’s form slowly shimmered turning from the image of a boy into a firefly flicker made of blue and green lights. “Say farewell for me.”

###

Siann collapsed across the boy’s unconscious form. Tears rolling down her face, sobs racking her trembling frame. “He does not want to return” she choked out. “He has chosen to Walk.”  Power drained, heart broken, Siann’s slender body could not bear the burden, and she fainted.

Dahi picked Siann up in strong arms and placed her on a pile of furs beside where a sleeping Miah was resting.

“What do we tell everyone?” he said.

“That Siann tried,” D’vhan answered his eyes full of tears for both young lives so brutally damaged. “Let the healers do their job, they will anyway. Maybe they can hold Ihkopi’s body here long enough for his Spirit to turn around.”

D’vhan slept on the floor between Siann and Ihkopi’s pallet, waking every time the healer came to add more wood to the fire or pour sweet wine seasoned with honey and medicinal herbs down the boy’s unresponsive throat.

Sweat poured from Ihkopi’s body no matter how much liquid the healers made him drink. Just before dawn he started to moan, his body shaking with convulsions. D’vhan and Miah stretched themselves out across the boy’s unconscious form, trying to hold Ihkopi in the bed, to stop him from harming himself.

A heartbreaking stream of muttered phrases, words of apology, pleas for forgiveness poured from the boy’s tortured soul. They heard of his wish to become a warrior, his desire to be like D’vhan who could choose his own Road, his love for his parents and his pain when they had listened to Iamaat’s poison and disowned him.

Tears ran down D’vhan’s face, he had never felt so helpless. How had he not seen this happening? How could he have ignored the depth of Ihkopi’s pain? Siann had tried to warn them, the Lifebinder had said that Iamaat meant to harm the boy but they had trusted their Green Mother, believed that she would not harm one of her children. Now look where that blind faith had led them.

For more check out my book: Guardian– Book 2 in the Sky Road Series

If you want to see the begining of Siann’s story it is available on Amazon HERE

Fiona, thank you so much for interviewing me for your blog! It’s so exciting to see the book babies expanding into the great big world!

authorsinterviews

Hello and welcome to my blog, Author Interviews. My name is Fiona Mcvie. 

Let’s get you introduced to everyone, shall we? Tell us your name. What is your age? 

Hi Fiona, my name is Sandra Hurst and I’m a Sci/fi – Fantasy author, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you and your readers today! I’m 31 years old with 25 years of experience (okay I’m 56).

Fiona: Where are you from? 

I was born in Nottingham England and moved to northern Canada when I was 8 years old.

Fiona: Tell us a little about yourself.

I live in Calgary, Alberta with my husband and son, both of whom I love dearly, and have put up for sale on e-bay when their behaviour demanded it.  My day to day life is a balance between my outside life as a paralegal counsellor and my inner life as an author/poet. In…

View original post 2,173 more words

When Cyn Redman moved to Peace as a pre-teen she was sure that she would never fit in. Small town life was just not for her.  Enjoy this short story based in the world of  The Peace Novella Series.  For more of Cyn’s ‘grownup’ life, click on the image below.

Cyn’s First Halloween

“Mom, why would you agree to do this,” Cyn whined. Her first Halloween in Peace, and it was going to be lame.

Bev Redman smiled as she slid Cyn’s breakfast across the worn melamine table. Cyn stabbed murderously at the congealing eggs on her plate. “So much for trying to fit in!” There was just no way to explain, she thought, how uncool it was for your mom to show up at school to read fairy tales and legends. She wasn’t a baby anymore. This was an eighth-grade English class, they didn’t need a Halloween Story.

“The school librarian asked me to do it, Cyn.” Bev said, her warm brown eyes smiling over the edge of her coffee cup. “It’s the first time they’ve approached a parent to do the Halloween story, I have to do it.”

A few arguments and a short drive later, Bev dropped her sulking daughter at Peace Middle school and went to check on the renovations for her new clinic on Main street. Bev smiled as she taped large cut-out pumpkins and tombstones to the windows of her storefront, refusing to allow Cyn’s thirteen-year-old sophistication spoil what had always been her favourite holiday.

Redman Holistic Counselling would open before Thanksgiving. It was a dream come true, Bev thought. She had come a long way from her days as the local party gal. It had taken years but now she was back, Dr. Beverly Redman, stronger than she ever had been and with a mission to help the people of Peace move past the town’s chequered past.

Bev walked into the classroom at exactly 1:30, and grinned as Cyn rolled her eyes hard enough for it to count as exercise. Talking quietly to the teacher and settling herself in the beanbag chair in front of the squirming group of bored looking pre-teens, Bev watched as her daughter slowly wormed her way towards the back of the group desperately trying to avoid her mother’s attention.

“Good afternoon.” Bev’s quiet contralto held the attention of the class better than any amount of volume would. “Mrs. Jepsen invited me here to read my favourite scary story. So, listen now, and I will tell you the story of the Tell-tale Heart.

With a wave of her hand the lights in the small classroom dimmed until the room seemed to be enveloped in a twilight murk. Bev let the silence build for a few seconds broken only by the quiet sibilant hiss of the overhead air vents. Then, from the depths of the beanbag chair, she spoke.

“TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

The silence grew deeper as the words of Edgar Allen Poe’s classic story of guilt and obsession drifted through the room. Eyes that had been flitting from the carpet to the window found themselves drawn into the story that Bev was weaving.  Her low calm voice lulling them into a false security only to rise sharply as the madness in the story became more and more evident.

With the villain brought to justice and the story ended Bev allowed the silence to build for a few minutes before gesturing for the lights. Standing up from the beanbag chair and collecting her purse she smiled as the teacher checked the clock on the wall and addressed the class.

“Say thank you to Ms. Redman for sharing her favourite story,” Mrs. Jepsen said, “and then, after you’ve copied tomorrow’s English assignment from the blackboard, you are dismissed.”

A few mumbled thank-you’s followed her as Bev. walked down the brightly lit school hallway and out the door. The cool October sun was shining on the golden leaves of the aspens in the schoolyard. Crossing to perch on the hood of her old Prius she tilted her head back turning her nut-brown face to the afternoon sun. The piercing sound of the school bell interrupted her tanning and warned of an incoming rampage. Children from knee-high to Jr. High charged out of the door, some in small groups of one’s and two’s, some in the kind of herds she remembered from her childhood. Bev kept her eyes out for the solitaries, the lonely ones were worth watching, she reminded herself, they were the ones who were easy targets for the kind of bullying and abuse she had endured as a teen. Cyn was usually one of the solitaries. Ever since they had come to Peace she had worried about her daughter’s withdrawn attitude and lack of friends.

A particularly rambunctious group of children barreled out of the exit and headed toward her car. In the middle of the noise and hustle was Cyn, talking a mile a minute to a bouncy, pigtailed girl about the jellybean dance in the gym the following night and trick-or-treating on the weekend.

“Hey, Mrs. Redman” a sandy-haired boy with shock blue eyes smiled up at her. “Wicked story!”

“Yah!”  Cindi Mason said, pigtails swinging wildly as she bopped around, “Your mom is so cool, Cyn!”

Bev slipped into the Prius and waited for Cyn to say her goodbyes and buckle in. Shifting the old car into gear she headed towards home. Her eyes flickered from the rear-view mirror to the smiling face beside her. Her first Halloween back in Peace was so totally not going to be lame.

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The most divisive, hurtful, downright skanky word in the English language isn’t hatred, or prejudice, or anger, it is much, much older and more basic than that. It is the word, them. . .

Coming from the old Norse word ‘theim’ its meaning is literally ‘of them’. The word epitomizes the plight of the other, the exile, the outsider. If you are ‘of them’ are not and can never be ‘of us.’

Every war that has ever been fought, every political movement that has sought gain at the expense of a minority of the population, every high school clique that turned someone’s difference into a reason for exclusion; all started with a ‘them.’ They are not us so its okay to demonize, persecute, tease or bully them.

So, if being ‘the other’ is such a downright nasty position to be stuffed into, why would I take a character and deliberately put them in that position? Force them into the situation of not belonging, not fitting in?

Well, one of the biggest things I try to create in my writing is the sense of connectedness between the writer and the characters. Although they live in an unreal world, I want readers to understand that my characters, even the bad ones, are real people who have been pushed outside their comfort zones and forced to become something new.

Managing that horrible balance between the need to be who you truly are and the risks of stepping out of that self-imposed isolation is something that everyone deals with at some point.

In Exile, Y’keta refuses to blindly follow the expectations of his elders. Because he won’t just shut his beak and be quiet, he is exiled and forced into living among the people of Esquialt knowing that revealing even a hint of who he really is could destroy him. He truly is different, more different than the people of the village can possibly imagine. Will revealing his true nature destroy his chance to find a home? Can he take that chance?

In Guardian, Siann faces a different kind of isolation as she is forced to deal with the darkness within her own nature. She has the power and responsibility she has always wanted but it’s out of control. The price for using her power is terribly high. Conversations stop as she walks by. The little children are frightened by the magic that echoes in her voice. She’s a stranger, a freak in her own home.

Can Y’keta accept his responsibility to the Village? Will Siann control the power within her before it kills again?

The decisions these two outsiders make will change the People’s lives forever.